I want anonymous call blocking

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: Nov 19, 2006 Posts: 2

Hello!

I was downloading quite a bit today, and my friend could not tell I was on a Voip, when I told him, he was totally shocked. Screw the features. I like what Vonage is offering. Lower cost, voicemail, call waiting, caller id, the rest I know will come later when Vonage advances, verizon did not have all the features it once had either. Verizon refused to fix the line in the alley that would cut off in the rain, or be fuzzy on a sunny day, my Voip sounds better then my old land line did if you can belive that. I set up my router for QOS for my dlink and viola! I love my new Vonage, i love new technolgy and even with new technolgy like the cell phones, things get better with time, why fret and demand things now? You knew what features Vonage had before you signed up, didn't you?

mario

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: Nov 07, 2005 Posts: 2

I don't understand what is so difficult about giving us this feature! We have been asking for it for several YEARS!

Posts: 135 · Posted: Tue Nov 28, 2006 5:14 pm Post subject:

yeah many of the users are requesting for this service, but it's hard for a Voip line to block a call because of the transformation of the normal dial tone to packets that can travel to the web,
but dont worry Vonage is still developing this feature

Posts: 2257 · Posted: Tue Nov 28, 2006 5:22 pm Post subject:

raijenkins wrote:

yeah many of the users are requesting for this service, but it's hard for a Voip line to block a call because of the transformation of the normal dial tone to packets that can travel to the web,
but dont worry Vonage is still developing this feature

This has nothing to do with "normal dial tone to packets". This is a routing issue.

IF (phone number = "")
{ route call to customer's voicemail }
ELSE
{ route call to customer's Vonage adapter.}

In fact, many of the devices Vonage employs already HAVE caller ID blocking capabilities. They are just locked away in the Voip settings screens that Vonage won't allow us access to.

Not that I want this, since many calls I get from people I want to talk to are caller-ID blocked. But implementing this has nothing to do with packet transformation - it's a simple recognition of a callerid-blocked call.

Posts: 135 · Posted: Tue Nov 28, 2006 5:35 pm Post subject:

well changing of dial tone to packets is also a issue for call blocking in the Vonage line,
if you will see the debug(which can only be seen by a Vonage tech)
there is the changing of pakets to dial tone, and Vonage hasnt develop a program or a feature that can deny the messages received in the debug of the device, that is blocking a call

Posts: 2257 · Posted: Tue Nov 28, 2006 7:52 pm Post subject:

raijenkins wrote:

well changing of dial tone to packets is also a issue for call blocking in the Vonage line,
if you will see the debug(which can only be seen by a Vonage tech)
there is the changing of pakets to dial tone, and Vonage hasnt develop a program or a feature that can deny the messages received in the debug of the device, that is blocking a call

The dial tone is the buzzing noise you hear when you pick up the phone to make a call. It is generated by your local Vonage device, so it isn't even changed into packets at all.

In order to enable ACR, Vonage would simply need to turn on the ACR Reject flag in the Vonage adapter, for those adapters that have the capability. You could do it yourself, if Vonage allowed access to the Voip settings page on your adapter. For all but the oldest adapters, this is already built into the firmware. Vonage just needs to put a flag on the web site that allows you to set it so the setting can be synchronized down to your adapter. Unfortunately, for whatever reason (probably the fact that not all adapters support ACR) they have elected not to implement this.

Barring that, they could capture anonymous calls (those without any caller ID information) and easily forward the call to your voice mail before it hit the Vonage adapter at all.

Neither of these solutions is technically very hard, they obviously have other things (like E911 and other regulatory compliance issues) they feel are more important.

The caller ID information comes in between the first and second rings, not the "dial tone". I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "messages received in the debug of the device", but the caller ID data is sent, and most Voip adapters have a feature that allows the call to be ignored if that data is blank.

Of course, the phone would still ring once, then the phone would stop ringing as soon as the caller ID data comes across, and the call would go to voicemail.

That's why a server-side solution would be ideal. You wouldn't get that initial ring, and it would work on all Vonage adapters, since the call would be intercepted before it even reached your adapter.

It would be even better if you could list off a bunch of actual telephone numbers you want to reject, too, in case someone is hassling you or whatever - just dump their calls to voice mail along with the anonymous ones.

Posts: 1123 · Vonage Forum **MVM** Joined: May 26, 2005 Posts: 1123

raijenkins wrote:

well changing of dial tone to packets is also a issue for call blocking in the Vonage line,
if you will see the debug(which can only be seen by a Vonage tech)
there is the changing of pakets to dial tone, and Vonage hasnt develop a program or a feature that can deny the messages received in the debug of the device, that is blocking a call

Is that Vonage's official stand on the issue? Is that what they want to tell people?

Posts: 188 · Vonage Forum Master Joined: Mar 07, 2004 Posts: 188

raijenkins wrote:

yeah many of the users are requesting for this service, but it's hard for a Voip line to block a call because of the transformation of the normal dial tone to packets that can travel to the web,
but dont worry Vonage is still developing this feature

Maybe Vonage should hire someone from any of the other Voip companies that seam to have no problem figuring out how to offer their "valued" customers such a desired feature. I just wonder how embarrassing it must be for Vonage the they are the only Voip that can't offer this feature. But hey, cool commercials!!! How's the IPO going?

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Dec 07, 2006 Posts: 1

I agree!
C'mon Vonage, stop spending so much money on commercials and start giving your current subscribers what they want most..
Your going to start loosing people!

I say we should all start sending Vonage feedback with this request, bombarding them till' they give!!! Twisted Evil

Posts: 8 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 05, 2006 Posts: 8

Well since this is kind of an old thread I thought I would call in and ask for an update as to when this feature would be available.

I got a nice sounding person in India that said it would be available in Febuary 2007. Great I thought! Can I please have the ticket # for this call. No was her polite answer as they don't have one as they do not track calls of a non technical nature.

Well that can't be correct I thought so I asked for the manager and was put on hold. Got a nice sounding person in the US. And get the same reply from him. He also stated that she should not have told me this Febuary date. He could neither confirm or deny that this feature would be available at that date.

So basically Vonage has no idea how many customers are requesting this feature as they are not logging the calls.

Looks like I will be looking for a different carrier.